Brain Is the Final Frontier, Even More

¶ … brain is the final frontier, even more so than outer space. Studying the brain is as difficult as studying outer space due to the limitations of technology. However, there are also ethical limitations to neuroscience research, as well as research design, methodological, and statistical limitations. The basic structure of the brain has been fairly well documented, but brain chemistry remains elusive, as do general process modeling and other abstract and location-independent functions such as memory. Technological limitations will remain a challenge for brain researchers.

Current technologies in brain imaging continue to offer fruitful results in research, but fail to offer significant breakthroughs that can aid in the study of consciousness. Through current technologies, localized functions and processes can be witnessed, but more complex ones such as imagination and dreams cannot be tested for using technologies. Language and linguistics are also difficult to research using technology, and tend to rely on substandard methods for research. The limitations of technology are evident also in the study of psychopathologies.

For example, functional imaging have yet to develop the level of specificity that could help illuminate the etiologies of mental illnesses, or to help researchers develop the most targeted pharmaceutical interventions. Breakthroughs in neuroscience research would be helpful. Furthermore, the resolutions of imaging need to be improved in order to present more accurate pictures of brain processes. Theoretical limitations such as assumptions, biases, and general lack of creativity in research present challenges to neuroscience. For example, Schilibach et al.

(2013) discuss the budding area of social neuroscience, in which brain research is conducted in real-time social interactions -- something that has never been conceived prior. Yet these types of studies are difficult to design. There are also legalistic issues that constrain research. For instance, researchers have long been unable to study the effects of psychedelic drugs on live human subjects. The limitations to the research are not only ethical in nature, but also theoretical.

Currently, neuroscience lacks a cohesive theoretical paradigm that can take into account nonverbal experience, experiences of transcendence, and general emotional states in ways that remain true to the scientific method while also recognizing the relevance of other methods by which to conduct the research. There are many ethical limitations that are evidence in neuroscience, and which prevent a full understanding of the brain. The ethical problems with studying psychedelic drugs are obvious, but can be overcome easily.

Other ethical problems include those that are related to the brain's sensitivity, and the lack of parallel between animal and human subjects. If a researcher wants to know how a human being will react to a certain stimuli or chemical intervention, the experimental group would be taking on perhaps a greater risk than would be allowed professionally. Yet to study higher order processes like creativity or language, researchers cannot rely on animal subjects.

Other challenges to brain research include the methodological, statistical, and research design limitations that plague all areas of science, but these may be overcome gradually with time and with improvements to technologies. Small sample sizes continue to plague the validity of neuroscience research (Button, et al., 2013). Of the.